Mark Goldes' "Aesop Institute" has engaged for many years in the very dishonest and unscrupulous practice of soliciting loans and donations under an endless series of false pretenses, that it is developing and even "prototyping" various "revolutionary breakthroughs," such as "NO FUEL ENGINES" that run on ambient heat alone - or run on "Virtual Photon Flux" - or on "Collapsing Hydrogen Orbitals" - or even on the acoustic energy of sound from a horn.

Aesop Institute's make-believe strictly ambient heat engine is ruled out by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This has been understood by physicists for at least 180 years. There is no "new science" that has ever determined such an engine to be possible.

Aesop Institute's make-believe "Virtual Photon Flux" engine is based on the idea that accessible electric power "is everywhere present in unlimited quantities" - which we know to be false.

Aesop Institute's make-believe "Collapsing Hydrogen Orbital" engine is based on Randell Mills' theory of "hydrino" hydrogen, which every scientist knows to be false.

Aesop Institute's make-believe horn-powered engine is based on the pretense that a magnetized tuning rod could somehow "multiply energy" - a ludicrous notion, which is obviously ruled out by the law of conservation of energy.

Aesop Institute has never offered the slightest shadow of evidence that it is actually developing or "prototyping" any of these make-believe physics-defying "revolutionary breakthroughs." All it has ever offered are mere declarations that it is doing so - unsupported by any proof whatever, of any kind whatever.

Mark Goldes, starting in the mid-seventies, engaged for several years in the pretense that his company SunWind Ltd was developing a nearly production-ready, road-worthy, wind-powered "windmobile," based on the windmobile invented by James Amick; and that therefore SunWind would be a wonderful investment opportunity.

After SunWind "dried up" in 1983, Goldes embarked on the long-running pretense that his company Room Temperature Superconductors Inc was developing room-temperature superconductors; and that therefore Room Temperature Superconductors Inc would be a wonderful investment opportunity. He continues the pretense that the company developed something useful, even to this day.

And then Goldes embarked on the pretense that his company Magnetic Power Inc was developing "NO FUEL ENGINES" based on "Virtual Photon Flux;" and then, on the pretense that MPI was developing horn-powered "NO FUEL ENGINES" based on the resonance of magnetized tuning-rods; and then, on the pretense that his company Chava Energy was developing water-fueled engines based on "collapsing hydrogen orbitals;" and then, on the pretense that he was developing ambient-heat-powered "NO FUEL ENGINES." Goldes has even claimed that Jacob T. Wainwright already patented an ambient-heat-powered engine 100 years ago - even though Wainwright himself certainly never made any such claim, at all. Wainwright's only patent for a turbine or engine was not for any ambient-heat-powered engine, but for a pressurized-gaseous-fluid-powered engine. The innovation of the patent was the use of water to reduce speed - not any use of ambient heat.

Goldes' forty-year career of "revolutionary invention" pretense has nothing to do with science, but only with pseudoscience and pseudophysics - his lifelong stock-in-trade.

1976: Goldes seeks investors with fraudulent claims to have developed a production-ready wind-propelled, wind-rechargeable motorcycle that can reach 60 mph:

1998: Goldes fools the witless US Air Force with his "room temperature superconductor" scam, receiving over four hundred thousand dollars in "Innovative Research" grants. Goldes has never produced any superconductor.

2005: Goldes seeks investors with fraudulent claims that his company, MPI, is developing "Magnetic Power Modules":

2008: Goldes seeks investors with fraudulent claims that "MPI is also developing breakthrough magnetic energy technologies including POWERGENIE (Power Generation of Electricity by Nondestructive Interference of Energy)." The basic idea of POWERGENIE is to generate electricity from sound energy, by blowing a horn at a magnetized tuning rod. Goldes claims to have "run an electric car for more than 4,800 miles with no need to plug-in." According to Goldes, "[MPI] Revenues from licenses and Joint Ventures are conservatively projected to exceed $1 billion annually by 2012."

2009: Goldes seeks investors with fraudulent claims that his latest scamporation, Chava Energy, "has been developing enhanced theoretical and practical paths that lead towards commercialization of energy conversion systems that utilize hydrinos." He now claims to be "developing a Self Powered Internal Combustion Engine – SPICE(tm) powered by hydrinos."

"For over 20 years Mark Goldes has claimed his company MPI has been developing machines that generate energy for free. In over 20 years his company has not presented one shred of evidence that they can build such machines...

"For the past five years Mark Goldes has been promising generators 'next year.' He has never delivered. Like 'Alice in Wonderland' there will always be jam tomorrow, but never jam today."

- Penny Gruber, December 2008

- Gruber's comment was written almost five years ago - but it's just as true today - except that MPI, Goldes' corporation that he claimed would bring in one billion dollars in revenue from his imaginary generator in 2012, is now defunct, having never produced any "Magnetic Power Modules" - just as his company called "Room Temperature Superconductors Inc" is also now defunct, having never produced any "room temperature superconductors." Evidently there's a limit to how many years in a row the same company can claim it will finally have something to demonstrate "next year." Now Goldes has a new scamporation, Chava Energy.

Goldes' current favorite scam is an engine that would run on ambient heat - which is clearly ruled out by the Second Law of Thermodynamics. But of course, the laws of physics always make an exception for the scams of Mark Goldes.

One of the most laughable of Mark Goldes' many invention scams is his "POWERGENIE" sound-powered generator. The brilliant idea of this revolutionary breakthrough is to blow a horn at a magnetized tuning rod, designed to resonate at the frequency of the horn, and then collect the electromotive energy produced by the vibrations of the rod.

I'm not making this up.

POWERGENIE tuning rod engine explained - from the patent:

[The device incorporates] "an energy transfer and multiplier element being constructed of a ferromagnetic substance possessing magnetostrictive characteristics, magnetoelastic characteristics,or both; and having a natural resonance, due to a physical structure whose dimensions are directly proportional to the wavelength of the resonance frequency..."

"In this resonant condition, the rod material functions as a tuned waveguide, or longitudinal resonator, for acoustic energy."

"Ferrite rod 800 is driven to acoustic resonance at the second harmonic of its fundamental resonant frequency by acoustic horn 811, resulting in acoustic wave 816 within the rod having two nodal points. Each nodal point exhibits instantaneous acoustic pressure opposite the other nodal point. Bias magnet 801 produces magnetic flux 802 extending axially through both nodal points developed within rod 800. Since both nodal points within the rod develop oppositely signed instantaneous acoustic pressure, the electromotive force developed via the magnetoelastic effect at each nodal point is oppositely directed. Coils 820 and 821 are wound oppositely and connected in electrical series, such that their developed electromotive forces add. The sum electromotive force of coils 820 and 821 develops electrical current and power in resistive load 830."

- But the patent doesn't tell us who is going to volunteer blow the horn at the rod all day. Perhaps it will come with an elephant.

Goldes claimed in 2008 that this wonderful triumph of human genius would bring his company, Magnetic Power Inc, one billion dollars in annual revenue by 2012. Magnetic Power Inc is now defunct, having never produced any "Magnetic Power Modules" - just as his company called "Room Temperature Superconductors Inc" is also now defunct, having never produced any "room temperature superconductors."

Nuclear reactors unlike any other power source are the best producers of thermal energy, if constructed and maintained properly. The ifs are rarely done properly, and the waste byproducts are stored improperly.
It would also help if these facilities could operate in areas without imminent threat of earthquakes or other apparent disasters.
Until governments and industry realise the implications of their poor decisions, nuclear is in limbo.

The quoted cost and area of an solar installation with the same peak output are laughable. San Onofre was about 2.2 GW peak power, so $44 billion implies a capital cost of $20/W peak, which is inflated by almost exactly a factor of ten relative to recent figures for utility scale PV installations.

The original calculation (there are things called links, they make the internet better, here is an example http://sites.uci.edu/energyobserver/2012/04/12/cost-and-area-of-replacin...) used 2011 $/W numbers, prices have approximately halved since then. The prof also wasn't calculating peak power, he rather estimated a reasonable 20% capacity factor for PV (and implied an unreasonable 100% capacity factor for nuclear, as we have seen above these plants can break).

Did you inflate the cost of solar out of ignorance, or to agree with your political biases? I wonder which is true? I wonder which is more disappointing?

Environmentalists, cock-a-hoop over the closure of the place....
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No, those are not environmentalists. Call them "anti-nuclear activists" or call them "nuclear-phobes". But they are not environmentalists.
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If they were, they would not oppose power sources which do not trash the quality of the air. They would not enthuse about power sources which require covering square mile after square mile with solar power cells . . . and still have to be backed up by power plants burning carbon, because we still need power when the sun goes down.

But that could change now the California Public Utilities Commission—the regulatory body that sets the rates private companies offering public services within the state can charge customers—has launched its own investigation into the matter. If the commission decides consumers deserve a refund, then the utility’s shareholders will have to cover the cost themselves. Babbage cannot recall when, if ever, that has happened before.

There's a first time for everything and that time is now. www.a4nr.org

But that could change now the California Public Utilities Commission—the regulatory body that sets the rates private companies offering public services within the state can charge customers—has launched its own investigation into the matter. If the commission decides consumers deserve a refund, then the utility’s shareholders will have to cover the cost themselves. Babbage cannot recall when, if ever, that has happened before.

There's a first time for everything and that time is now. www.a4nr.org

The French can make nuclear power work. The US Navy can make nuclear power work.
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What's wrong with organization, regulation, planning and construction that the US as a whole can't make it work? Why can't we copy from those who are successful? Certainly, it is not a matter of ability. What stands in the way?

" The French can make nuclear power work. The US Navy can make nuclear power work."

I have been using those two points of reference since before Diablo Canyon and San Onofre broke grounds - to no avail I must admit. To give the most succinct answer to your question I would have to say: necessity and education.
The French cannot not use nuclear - and they go about it in a very methodical manner. Each new design incorporates the lessons learned from the previous reactors.They have become very, very good at it. The Navy does not have to deal with a bunch of over-fed and under-educated emotional voters. Hyman Rickover did to our naval nuclear program what the French did to their civilian one: made it the best there is. Essentially, we can afford to play hysterical theatrics about nuclear power because we can fall back on coal; the French cannot. The fear of nuclear is as visceral among a large portion of our populace as the fear of snakes is among the populace at large. It cannot be approached rationally, no matter what.

Until maybe two years ago, I would have agreed with you 100%. But I'm less sure now: the cost overruns on the construction, both in Finland and in France, of the most recent generation of power plants (known as EPR) are just horrendous. It's as though we (I live in France) have forgotten how to build them.

The French and Navy examples are not pertinent to civilian nuclear power subject to market forces. For Navy reactors, cost was no object because we ABSOLUTEY had to have them to take on the Soviet Union. And since cost was no object, the temptation to cut corners in design, construction or operation wasn't there. In the French experience with nuclear power, the Socialist government basically dictated by fiat that the country would build a lot of reactors. It also built a reprocessing industry from scratch and subsidizes the reprocessed fuel since it costs 10x as much to produce than virgin uranium fuel.

When subject to market forces, nuclear power as been an abysmal failure. In the Pacific Northwest, 15% of your electric bill goes to cover the the failed nuclear dreams of WPPSS. In ontario, $19B in "stranded debt" was accumulated trying to build CANDU reactors and was passed onto everybody's electricity bill when Ontario Hydro had to be broken up / bailed out by the government. Ontario ratepayers have since paid as much in cumulative interest payments over the years as the original bill from all the cost overruns from building these reactors.

On top of all this, all US taxpayers have to shoulder the burden of providing liability insurance to the nuclear industry through the Price Anderson Act. Reactors cannot obtain the necessary coverage against Fukushima-type events on the commercial market at ANY price, so the government has to step in and broker the coverage for them. Finally, utilities building reactors have been allowed by state regulators to charge their customers billion$$$ in "cost recovery" while the reactors are under construction to lower their financing costs. If the reactors are never completed, the ratepayers are out all that money and the utility execs that gambled and lost with all that money probably get golden parachutes on their way out the door.

Along with the billion$$$ in R&D and backstopping the financial risks of building reactors, governments have sent strong signals to the nuclear industry that their's is a preferred approach, both with direct spending and policy. Even so, the implosion of the nuclear industry in the 70's and 80's should make us wary of history repeating itself.

Nuclear power has an unrecognized Achilles Heel. A solar superstorm is surprisingly possible. This is a Solar Maximum year and the next two years look equally vulnerable.

If a solar superstorm emission slams into our geomagnetic field, which has happened in the past, it can cause blackouts worldwide lasting for months. Nuclear plants without grid power for two weeks are meltdown candidates and the likely result is "hundreds of Fukushimas".

See the AESOP Institute website.

Black Swans, highly improbable inventions that can substitute cheap green energy for nuclear power are being born. One or more is likely to prove practical within a year. See the same site for a few examples.

A major earthquake and/or tsunami is a far more immediate and legitimate concern than a "solar superstorm." The last one occurred in 1859 and they occur about once every 500 years . . . the Earth may be sucked into a black hole or blown up by a gamma ray burst too.

Experts on solar storms have stated that superstorms such as the Carrington Event in 1859 happen every 150 years and we are overdue for such an event.

While that strong an impact is expected to bring down all the planet's power grids for months, the 1921 storm, if it happens now, might bring down half of the power grids for months. That storm was the result of 3 M-Class solar emissions on successive days. Last month we had a half dozen storms that had they hit our geomagnetic field could have been equally damaging.

The White House recently added such storms to a short list of extreme events to be monitored very closely.

What this article does not mention is that the estimated decommissioning cost fort these two reactors is $3 billion, leaving another short fall of $300 million from the gathered funds. The Economist has not been gentle with the nuclear industry and its perpetual poor economics. [See the Dream that Failed http://www.economist.com/node/21549098]

But what a more recent analysis shows is that all of the US subsidies for nuclear exceed the wholesale value of all the energy that the reactors in the US have built. Greenhouse gases aside, this makes nuclear one of the worst investments of all time. Pity the UK and US cant learn this lesson and are still wasting taxpayer money on it. [See http://funologist.org/2012/11/27/what-a-really-poor-investment-looks-like/]

If San Onofre had been allowed to resume operations with one reactor at 100 percent and the other at 70 percent, $26 million a year of uranium would have had to be mined. Equivalent natural gas will cost $450 million a year.

The extra cost may seem like a huge waste of human effort, but for the US federal government, it represents at least $56 million a year in royalty income.

Indeed, even in the micro-climate of my home, I keep looking to add a solar electric array. Due to restricted finances, I can't just up and do it without analyzing the cost/benefit. Thus far, it has always been more economical to replace current energy-consuming devices with higher-efficency devices.

Example: Pool pump. I switched from a single-speed to a dual speed. For the cost of the pump ($280), I cut down annual electric expense by roughly $150. Tough to beat - way better than the return with solar. (and I could have gone with a variable speed pump, which would have cut electric expense by about another $50, but would have cost an additional $600 - about on par with solar).

It is a good idea to maximize energy efficiency. However, a lot of the decrease in solar panel prices in the past 10 years or so have come from "learning by doing". The PV industry has learned so many lessons that no amount of R&D could have uncovered while doubling in capacity several times over during this period. The potential of solar power is so great that we would be foolish to let it "wither on the vine" waiting for it to come straight out of the lab ready to compete with traditional energy sources. (Sources that get to offload the costs of dealing with their waste products onto society as a whole for free and who have benefitted from over a century of direct and indirect government support themselves.)

If you're concerning about the financial aspects of solar power, give Solar City a call and they'll install an array on your home for free. You don't own it of course, but you lock in an electricity rate for 20 years instead of seeing 1% - 2% yearly increases from the power company.

As this country's nuclear plants age I don't doubt there will be many more stories of this type. It is not surprising that stories of human error and failure come to light, and in fact I don't think that they're ultimately preventable. Mistakes happen. I'd be a lot more comfortable with mistakes happening with modern technology rather than something that's 50 years old. Anti-nuclear activists frequently (shrilly) point to the consequences of a failure of regulatory oversight or engineering... but failures will be bad largely because the technology is old and the safeguards are inadequate retrofits to standards promulgated in a bygone era. Frankly, these anti-nuclear activists' own efforts to prevent any new nuclear power capacity from being built in this country over the past few decades has made their bleating about the consequences of using nuclear power into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

In the meantime, there's natural gas, but for how long? There is talk of energy revolution in the air, but I've never believed today's prices are anywhere near sustainable or that the resources will last as long as the triumphalists maintain. If resources continue to work the way we think they do, by 2030 we'll see the end of the natural gas bonanza and be up shit creek, without a paddle.

As a long time anti-nuclear activist, i wish we could take credit for halting the development of new reactors in the US. But if we are honest, we are going to have to blame the bankers. Nuclear energy has been a risky and poor investment from before the Three Mile Island partial meltdown. Without government guarantees, there is no nuclear investment and while the government has often been foolishly generous with it's money towards nuclear, the consistent under estimation of costs and delivery times by zealous nuclear salespeople have given the industry a much deserved poor reputation.

Oh, and all 5 reactors under construction in the US right now are delayed and over budget, again i wish the anti-nuclear activists in the country could take some credit for this. But it is simply perpetual, perhaps structural incompetence on the part of the utilities and the nuclear construction firms.

You can't seriously claim that anti-nuclear activism has not been responsible for many of the costs and delays associated with nuclear power in the United States, both from the perspective of local opposition and indirectly through increased regulatory or legislative oversight.
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As for the subsidies, I myself wonder about that. For all the talk about subsidies, it sure seems as if the market isn't taking advantage of them. To my knowledge, none of the new nuclear projects in the US have accepted government guaranteed loans because of the terms and conditions associated with them. As for the insurance cap at $10 billion, if you look at current insurance rates on nuclear power plants compared to other power plants with comparable non-nuclear thermal energy sources, either the insurance companies are charging some sort of "outrage premium," they believe the government will revoke the liability cap in the event of an actual nuclear disaster, or they are systematically overestimating the probability of an accident. I'd discount the latter because I like to think insurance actuaries have some level of competence. That's a head scratcher.
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I agree that the economics of new nuclear power plants don't look good right now - how would they, with shale gas, flat to decreasing demand, and utility-level rates of return? - but for fully depreciated plants the economic equation swings the other way, and I hope you will forgive me if I point out that that hasn't stopped anti-nuclear activists such as (presumably) yourself from continuing.
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I will be the first one to admit that nuclear boosters (of which I am emphatically not - I like to think of myself as more pragmatic than anything else) have been overenthusiastic with their cost estimates, but there are other factors at play. Of the five reactors you've listed, a good number are overbudget because of regulatory limbo and delays. There is nothing mysterious or structurally incompetent about that. The NRC has been given an enormous and important task and doesn't have the resources to do it, and everyone in the heavily regulated industry suffers as a result. How is that news?

Ah Beng is right. Dedicated political opposition to nuclear power has indeed had a huge effect in making it more expensive. These groups have cultivated an excessive fear of radiation, and have grossly exaggerated the impacts of nuclear releases/accidents. Due to their efforts, it is likely that there will be a tremendous (public/politcal) over-reaction to any release of radiation, no matter how negligible in terms of actual health/environmental impact. That in turn will result in real, tangible economic and political costs.

Thus, NRC (and govt. in general) is excessively fearful of even the tiniest chance of any significant release of radioactivity, as compared to their complete lack of concern over the impacts of fossil fuels, which are thousands of times larger. US fossil plant cause ~14,000 American deaths every single year, and global warming, whereas US nuclear have never had any impact at all.

This results in excessive regulations, with the nuclear industry being required to spend thousands of times as much per unit of health risk reduction (in dollars per life saved). This has had an enormous impact on cost. If held to the same standards as fossil fuels, nuclear would probably cost less than half what it does today. (It actually did, in the past, before TMI.) On the flip side, if fossil fuels were treated like nuclear, i.e., not allowed to emit any pollution (or CO2) into the environment, or at least pay heavily for the privelege of doing so, they would cost as much as nuclear, if not more.

Oh, and Paxus isn't telling you that it is fossil fuels, not renewables, that nuclear is having trouble competing with (and is being replaced with). Renewables have always been built because of huge subsidies (much larger than any ever given to nuclear) and outright govt. mandates for their use.

The anti-nuclear movement has had some satisfying wins: Shoreham, Rancho Seco, halting uranium enrichment. Sadly we are usually bowled over by well heeled utilities and a completely captured regulator (the source of the Fukushima accident).

But if we want to give credit for what has delayed and blown the budgets of reactors we should look towards interest rates, frequent construction mistakes and regulators emboldened by accidents.

I don't know how you can so easily draw comparisons between US regulators and Japanese ones, nor imply that the fact that the Japanese regulator was captured by local utilities says anything about the US one.

Interest rates now should be more favorable to power plant construction than in any time in the past decade. Instead it's fossil energy that's killing the economics, among other things, as I said before.

The last point about the recovery of the additional costs incurred by PCE is very important. It is unlikely that the CPUC will impose the cost recovery fully on either customers or on PCE's shareholders and may find it is required to perform the 'judgement of Solomon'. Further reporting by The Economist on developments in this case would be very both interesting and valuable, since it may deliver a regulatory precedent.

I'm sure the lawyers will seek to stretch the elasticity of the notion of an 'accident', but this appears to be a sequence of management, design, operational and technical cock-ups that closure prevented becoming an 'accident' - even if a significant bill has been accumulated. I would be surprised if the Division of Ratepayer Advocates were prepared to take this hosing of customers without putting up some battle.